The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-01
With finger tips he condescends To touch the fingers of his friends As if he feared ther palms might brand Some moral stigma on his hand

Some moral stigma on his hand.
 Yet make the most of it, for unless you gain step in the social ladder you'll soon be beneath shakes, even the condescension of the fingers will be thought too great an effort for the wealthy man to make.
 The Retentive Shake. - Sweetness long drawn out it begins vigorously, pauses as if to take breath, and then starts again with unimpaired vitality, until you wonder where the end will be. Sometimes the shaker is anxious about family matters "So you're all we'll at home, are you? (Shake.) Have the children got over the whoop- ing cough? (Shake.) Pve just heard some capital news. (Shake.) Come down tonight and we'll talk it over." (Shake.) Mind you don't forget" | (Shake.) You gaze after the retreat ing form and feel if your elbow still works right, or whether you have a single shake left in you.
 The Fishy Shake. - Cold and clammy strikes the hand you grasp; ; giving you feeling of dissatisfaction and disgust, as you instinctively think of Urtah Hedp and, under one pretext or another, furtively take out your pocket handkerchief to whip off the moisture which seems to have passed from the palm of the shaker into yours. Possessed as rule by those whose tempers have gone wrong, whose milk of human kindness has turned sour, or whose hidden purposes it is impossi- ble to fathom, the clammy hand ire quently belongs to those with whom it is not pleasant to deal. In all tic- tion the ghostly hand is icy cold, or else fishy, clammy grasp-either will do to fill up the narrowing detail; even grim death himself is supposed to touch us with similar grasp; take warning in time, never try and perpe- trate joke with man who has a tishy hand shake for greeting. The Mechanical Shake.-Who is not familiar with the action of a pump handle as it is pushed up and down2 and in some hand shakes the same principle is at work. There is no soul in it; the lifting up and down of the arm, which, when it is released, falls down fiat against the owners side; the mechanical utterance of a few commonplace words, spoken like an automaton, all these tell you enough of the character of the man who stands before you. You cannot gather grapes from thorns, or else you might expect miracles to occur again | n n no tst h ovn6 SF @kf,,l~ s- any enthusiasm below the surface in the mind of the mechanical shaker, why, all we ask is, try and force it out of him, if you can. An earthquake might do it, because earthquakes somehow have a knack of wakening people up, but no human agency can accomplish such feat, and, after all, when you come to consider what con- sequences might ensue, it would scarcely be wise to disturb the seren- ity of 30 great pump-(we beg par don)-mind.
 The Gushing Shake.-The how -are- you shake, with the how very large and loud, the sort of greeting that fairly takes your breath away, and makes you fear you will be eaten up before you know it-the jolly man or the jolly woman, ts whom life is a pleasure, and whose existence is series of delights, who wants every body to be as happy as he is himself, and whose flow of spirits fairly in- fects you with some measure of the same good humor your usual sober mindedness, maybe, comes to the res- cue just in time, however, and you get over the slight attack of un- wonted ffivolity; yet when the shaker has gone, it almost seems as if . ray of sunshine had shone on you, and the day seems all the brighter for the gleam.